BEST of the BETS

Inevitably, at the age of 64, the whole glorious shebang is peopled by friends and horses past – the warriors of decades done. But one of the four days' myriad beauties lies in the fact the next generations are already in happy thrall. We may not be able to hand on money as inheritance but the magic passes on to those who utterly understand that some of their parents' obsessions are indeed worth more than a candle.

We know, from bootstrap to bone marrow, that to triumph here requires the answering of questions that our risk-averse world all too rarely dares to ask. Hiding places there are not, just one of the reasons that the clamour of acclaim for winners returning to unsaddle is so uniformly admiring and celebratory.